Nov 18, 2021Presented here are recent news announcements regarding the following organizations: NXP Semiconductors, Ford Motor Co., Semtech, Everynet, Telkom Indonesia, STMicroelectronics, AiDash, Ezitech, JOAT Group, u-blox, ScaleOut, Primo1D, Kinetic and Nationwide.
NXP, Ford Collaborate on Connected Cars
NXP Semiconductors is collaborating with Ford Motor Co. to improve driver experiences, convenience and services across its global vehicle fleet. Ford's networked vehicle architecture implements NXP's vehicle networking processors and i.MX 8 Series processors to improve customer lifestyles and streamline the ownership experience.
NXP's processors provide secure, in-vehicle networking and enable a gateway to rapidly deploy over-the-air software updates and new services, while processing and sending vehicle data to the cloud in order to drive continual product improvements and support data-driven services, such as vehicle health management. The i.MX 8 Series processors enable Ford to deliver multimedia user experiences with graphics enabling in-car productivity, cloud services, voice recognition and location-based applications.
"NXP is helping Ford push the boundaries of what we all expect from a car by providing engaging in-car user experiences and over-the-air updates that continuously improve a vehicle beyond the date it drives off the lot," said Kurt Sievers, NXP Semiconductors' CEO, in a prepared statement. "Our S32G2 and i.MX 8 Series processors open the door to the expanded services, new user experiences and convenience that customers desire."
Semtech, Everynet, Telkom Indonesia Partner on LoRaWAN Vaccine Carrier
Semtech, a supplier of analog and mixed-signal semiconductors and algorithms, has announced that IoT architecture provider Everynet is collaborating with telecommunications supplier Telkom Indonesia to provide an insulated vaccine carrier to track and monitor temperatures, decrease waste and increase inoculation rates via a LoRaWAN network. Vaccines must be stored at specific temperatures to maintain efficacy, the companies explains, and the LoRaWAN-enabled carrier gathers a continuous and consistent data stream in real time.
"Over the last two years, Everynet has been laying the groundwork along with our partner, Telkom Indonesia, to deploy a public LoRaWAN network in Indonesia," said Ali Fahmi, Everynet's country manager for Indonesia, in a prepared statement. "The end result now features over 200 Indonesian cities with LoRaWAN coverage, with plans to further expand the coverage to more cities. The LoRaWAN network is ready to deliver simple, highly efficient, flexible, and secure IoT solutions throughout Indonesia."
The insulated carrier leverages a LoRaWAN national network in Indonesia, the company reports, thereby avoiding front-end investments related to infrastructure buildup and maintenance, while ensuring security and connectivity for customers. The solution continuously maintains temperature stability for vaccines, decreasing the incidence of wasted doses.
"The insulated vaccine carrier is leveraging IoT and LoRaWAN to send accurate data and log the temperature systematically during distribution," said Edi Witjara, Telkom Indonesia's director of enterprise and business service, in the prepared statement. "This relay of data will assist to guarantee the quality of the vaccine to comply with the regulation from Ministry of Health in Indonesia." Ibnu Alinursafa, the company's IoT platform senior manager, added, "The LoRa-based insulated vaccine carrier accelerates the vaccination program across Indonesia and is providing a quality service for the end customer."
COVID-19 vaccines require deep-freeze conditions throughout the supply chain to ensure their efficacy. To maintain a proper environment, vaccine temperatures must constantly be monitored, recorded and reported throughout all steps of the supply chain. The carrier is completely wireless and automated, the company reports, and if an anomaly is detected in the data stream, such as a drop or raise in temperature, a notification is sent so that the end user can immediately take corrective action.
"Everynet and Telkom Indonesia's successful implementation of the LoRaWAN standard for the insulated vaccine carrier is a great way to maintain the safe delivery of vaccines, which are critical in the fight against COVID-19 and other deadly diseases," said Marc Pégulu, the VP of IoT product marketing and strategy in Semtech's Wireless and Sensing Products Group, in the statement. "Now, critical aspects of the vaccine supply chain can be monitored at all times, highlighting a real life LoRaWAN use for a critical need that is making the planet, and its citizens, healthier in a smarter manner."
STMicroelectronics Intros NFC Tag IC with Privacy Features
STMicroelectronics has announced its ST25TN512 and ST25TN01K NFC Forum Type 2 tag ICs, designed for such use cases as consumer engagement, product information, brand protection, smart-city applications and access control. The ICs support multiple user-protection and privacy mechanisms, the company reports, including a 7-bit unique chip-identifier code, TruST25 digital signature, NFC Forum T2T permanent write locks at the block level, and a configurable kill mode that permanently deactivates the tag.
Certified to the Type 2 specifications, the ST25TN512 and ST25TN01K also leverage the ISO 14443 standards and can be used with NFC-compatible mobile devices or dedicated short-range readers. The embedded device memory includes up to 208 bytes (1,664 bits) for user content. Support for messages in NFC Data Exchange Format allows the triggering of native actions on a smartphone without requiring a dedicated app, such as launching a Web browser or starting Bluetooth pairing. Augmented NDEF enables the reading of dynamic information, such as custom messages and unique tap codes, without explicitly updating the EEPROM.
Both ICs contain an internal tuning capacitance of 50pF, allowing integration by inlay manufacturers. The tags harvest energy from the 13.56 MHz RF transmitter field and require only an antenna to complete the design. They have an operating temperature range of -40 degrees to +85 degrees Celsius (-40 degrees to +185 degrees Fahrenheit) and long data retention, according to STMicroelectronics. The ICs can be supplied in either sawn and bumped wafer format, or they can be housed in a DFN5 package.
AiDash Launches Sustainability-Management System
AiDash, a provider of satellite and AI-powered operations, maintenance and sustainability platforms, has announced its Intelligent Sustainability Management System (ISMS), designed to help companies achieve their sustainability goals. The ISMS software-as-a-service solution is expected to enable customers like National Grid to meet the biodiversity net gain standards, AiDash reports, and to increase cost savings and other efficiencies by eliminating the need for frequent, manual land surveys.
Organizations with large landholdings, such as National Grid and other utility, energy, water and wastewater companies, face the challenge of using traditional surveying methods to accurately map land types and measure biodiversity in each habitat. The cost and process complexities of these methods can hinder the implementation of natural capital enhancement plans for progressive, environmentally conscious organizations, the company explains.
"Sustainably responsible organizations are struggling to find integrated operations platforms that can help them stay on top of their goals and meet the regulations within their sectors," said Abhishek Singh, AiDash's cofounder and CEO, in a prepared statement. "Existing tools and techniques lack the ability to analyze historical data and make data-driven environmental improvements. Our new platform solves this problem, allowing organizations to achieve resource efficiency and implement individual Sustainable Development Goals. Any organization and/or government body with large land or water assets can benefit from ISMS."
The ISMS Land module is expected to help customers reduce laborious fieldwork through AI-backed image analysis for systematic mapping, planning and assessing land enhancements, as well as quantify biodiversity to plan sustainable land development and restoration initiatives based on the environmental value of varying habitats. The GHG emissions are measured across sources like well pads and gas pipelines through the ISMS Air module.
"At National Grid, we are committed to improving the Environmental Value across our sites in the U.K. by 10 percent by 2026, from a natural capital and biodiversity baseline," said Prem Gabbi, National Grid's head of property, in the prepared statement. "Collaborating with AiDash's satellite-powered Intelligent Sustainability Management System could enable us to make environmental surveys and audits, relatively seamless, while saving weeks of manual in the field work. This means we could efficiently leverage repeatable and transparent satellite data to design optimal strategies for enhancing the biodiversity across c.3500 hectares of non-operational National Grid land in the U.K. and regularly monitor improvements while reallocating internal resources."
Ezitech, JOAT Help South Africa Monitor Water Extraction with U-blox Tech
Ezitech, a technology consulting company, has announced that it is helping the South African government monitor the fair extraction of water by the country's agriculture sector. The solution, created in partnership with JOAT Group, uses IoT connectivity provided by u-blox's Thingstream communication-as-a-service platform to ensure that data is passed from tamperproof electromagnetic flow meters to pull all relevant information into the cloud.
Overseeing the extraction of water to farms in South Africa are regionally based Catch Management Forums, designed to ensure that farms adhere to their allocated amount of water extraction. Each Catch Management Forum receives live data via a cloud-based platform, providing detailed analysis of each farm's consumption. Farmers can view their metrics and correlate them to electricity consumption, enabling them to reduce electricity spend and drive efficiency. The system provides transparency to authorities and enables the farming industry to reduce the cost of water extraction by up to 40 percent. All data is transmitted through the Thingstream platform.
"U-blox's Thingstream IoT connectivity platform enables us to transport data about water extraction and electricity consumption from remote water pumping stations to the Google Cloud more reliably, and at a fraction of the cost of previous solutions," said Trevor Hart Jones, Ezitech's managing director, in a prepared statement. "JOAT provides services to various countries in Southern Africa. U-blox's Thingstream connectivity platform provides a commercially proven solution, available globally, which reduces data costs by up to [10 times] and can be deployed cross border without any additional costs nor design change."
ScaleOut Software Extends IoT Digital Twin Service
ScaleOut Software has announced extensions to its Digital Twin Streaming Service that integrate its in-memory computing platform with Microsoft's Azure Digital Twins cloud service. This integration adds new capabilities for real-time analytics to the Azure Digital Twins service, the company reports, and allows for new use cases in a variety of applications, such as predictive maintenance, logistics, telematics, disaster recovery, cybersecurity, physical security, health-device tracking, IoT, smart cities, financial services and ecommerce.
Azure Digital Twins Integration is a set of extensions to the streaming service that adds a real-time component to Azure-based digital twin models. ScaleOut Software's real-time components can perform low-latency message ingestion and processing with immediate access to their corresponding digital twin's properties, the firm explains, instead of requiring Azure serverless functions to perform these functions. In addition, the streaming service provides real-time data aggregation, continuous query and real-time visualization for digital twin properties.
The solution enables application developers to create and run a real-time component within a digital twin. This component hosts message-processing code and state properties used to track and analyze telemetry from a single data source on behalf of its corresponding digital twin instance. Message-processing code can be written in C#, Java or JavaScript, or using an intuitive rules-based language. It can incorporate machine-learning algorithms implemented using Microsoft's ML.NET library that require no code development and continuously examine incoming telemetry for anomalies.
Integrating ScaleOut's real-time components enables Azure digital twins to leverage in-memory computing and perform message processing with lower latency and faster access to state information than serverless functions, according to the company, and in-memory computing boosts scalability to handle thousands or millions of data sources. The streaming service connects directly with Azure IoT Hub and other message hubs, using a scalable software architecture for message ingestion and replies.
ScaleOut's real-time components incorporate APIs that can read and update state properties in digital twin instances. This makes it possible for the digital twins to store complex data structures, such as event lists. The system enables the continuous data aggregation and charting of state properties held in Azure Digital Twin instances, and users can perform continuous queries with geospatial visualization.
"We are excited to combine our in-memory computing technology with the popular Azure Digital Twins platform to deliver fast, scalable insights that help address real-time challenges across industries," said William Bain, ScaleOut Software's CEO and founder, in a prepared statement. "By incorporating this technology, ScaleOut Software is enabling a new wave of applications for Azure Digital Twins, and we look forward to helping our customers take full advantage of this integration to meet their real-time monitoring and streaming analytics capabilities."
Embedded RFID Company Primo1D Raises Funding
Primo1D, a provider of embedded UHF RFID tags for smart objects, has announced a funding round of €15 million ($17 million) from major French capital funds. Primo1D says it now has the means to move to industrial scale and accelerate its development in high-volume markets, including fast fashion and professional clothing, as well as industrial markets such as tires and electrical cables.
Primo1D's E-Thread tag offers a durable, plastic-free RFID solution for product identification, authentication and traceability, the company reports. Its customers have integrated E-Thread into products during manufacturing processes, making it inseparable and functional throughout a product's lifecycle. E-Thread ensures electronic identification and a durable link between a tagged item and the cloud, with RFID data stored, managed and shared via the Internet of Things. The product was conceived in response to the digitization challenges of complex supply chains, Industry 4.0 and new sustainable business models such as the circular economy, Primo1D adds.
"With this latest funding round, we are entering a phase of strong industrial growth to meet booming customer demand," said Emmanuel Arène, Primo1D's CEO and founder, in a prepared statement. "By providing a non-intrusive digital ID in a miniaturized, unique form factor, our disruptive E-Thread technology transforms products into smart objects. As such it enables new use cases in multiple industry sectors and supports corporate social responsibility initiatives."
Kinetic, Nationwide Offer Workers' Comp Wearables
KINETIC, a provider of wearable technology designed to foster safe environments for industrial workers, has announced Kinetic Insurance. Acting as a program manager, the new subsidiary is entering an underwriting agreement with Nationwide's E&S/Specialty division to offer workers' compensation insurance with a technology-driven approach. Nationwide made a venture capital investment in Kinetic in 2020.
Kinetic creates wearable technology and a software-analytics platform for the connected workforce. The wearable Kinetic Reflex device is designed to reduce the incidence of workplace injuries, the company reports, by automatically detecting unsafe postures and providing workers with real-time feedback whenever a high-risk motion occurs. Workers can use Reflex to improve their biomechanics, resulting in fewer injuries and improved well-being. Safety managers can view risk data in the Kinetic dashboard, which can make targeted changes to workplace processes in order to reduce injury risks.
The insurance offering equips policyholders with wearable technology that can reduce injuries and losses while fostering a policyholder's safety, the company explains. Kinetic says its patented technology has been verified by actuary firm Perr & Knight to reduce injury frequency up to 50 to 60 percent, and lost workdays by 72 percent. Fewer injuries, the company notes, equates to fewer claims and potential premium savings for employers.
The wearable tech is provided to policyholders at no extra cost. "Kinetic Insurance and wearable tech helps businesses keep their workforce safe and save money on their premiums, spending it where it counts," said Haytham Elhawary, Kinetic's founder and CEO, in a prepared statement. "The tech can reduce overall claims costs up to 50 percent in environments where high strain and sprain injury rates are present."
"Nationwide's investments in innovative insurance technology companies like Kinetic have given us the opportunity to partner with Kinetic Insurance to bring a truly unique product to the workers' compensation programs market," added Heather Schenker, the VP of Nationwide E&S/Specialty division, in the prepared statement. "Backed by Nationwide's strength and stability, this partnership continues our use of technology to help businesses protect their workforce and make smarter safety decisions."
